Max Lucado Daily: YOUR ADVOCATE
Not all guilt is bad. God uses appropriate doses of guilt to awaken us to sin! We know guilt is God-given when it causes “indignation…alarm…longing…concern…readiness to see justice done” (2 Corinthians 7:11 NIV). God’s guilt brings enough regret to change us. Satan’s guilt, on the other hand, brings enough regret to enslave us. Don’t let him get his shackles on you!
Remember “your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). When he looks at you, he sees Jesus first. In the Chinese language the word for righteousness is a combination of two characters, the figure of a lamb and a person. The lamb is on top, covering the person. Whenever God looks down at you, this is what he sees– the perfect Lamb of God covering you. Do you trust your Advocate or your Accuser?
From God is With You Every Day
Hebrews 4
When the Promises Are Mixed with Faith
1-3 For as long, then, as that promise of resting in him pulls us on to God’s goal for us, we need to be careful that we’re not disqualified. We received the same promises as those people in the wilderness, but the promises didn’t do them a bit of good because they didn’t receive the promises with faith. If we believe, though, we’ll experience that state of resting. But not if we don’t have faith. Remember that God said,
Exasperated, I vowed,
“They’ll never get where they’re going,
never be able to sit down and rest.”
3-7 God made that vow, even though he’d finished his part before the foundation of the world. Somewhere it’s written, “God rested the seventh day, having completed his work,” but in this other text he says, “They’ll never be able to sit down and rest.” So this promise has not yet been fulfilled. Those earlier ones never did get to the place of rest because they were disobedient. God keeps renewing the promise and setting the date as today, just as he did in David’s psalm, centuries later than the original invitation:
Today, please listen,
don’t turn a deaf ear . . .
8-11 And so this is still a live promise. It wasn’t canceled at the time of Joshua; otherwise, God wouldn’t keep renewing the appointment for “today.” The promise of “arrival” and “rest” is still there for God’s people. God himself is at rest. And at the end of the journey we’ll surely rest with God. So let’s keep at it and eventually arrive at the place of rest, not drop out through some sort of disobedience.
12-13 God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.
The High Priest Who Cried Out in Pain
14-16 Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.
Our Daily Bread reading and devotion
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Read: Romans 5:12–21
The Death-Dealing Sin, the Life-Giving Gift
12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
15-17 Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
18-19 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.
Little Lies and Kittens
By Tim Gustafson
Just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead. Romans 5:21 NLT
Mom noticed four-year-old Elias as he scurried away from the newborn kittens. She had told him not to touch them. “Did you touch the kitties, Elias?” she asked.
“No!” he said earnestly. So Mom had another question: “Were they soft?”
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1
“Yes,” he volunteered, “and the black one mewed.”
With a toddler, we smile at such duplicity. But Elias’s disobedience underscores our human condition. No one has to teach a four-year-old to lie. “For I was born a sinner,” wrote David in his classic confession, “yes, from the moment my mother conceived me” (Ps. 51:5 nlt). The apostle Paul said: “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Rom. 5:12 nlt). That depressing news applies equally to kings, four-year-olds, and you and me.
But there’s plenty of hope! “God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were,” wrote Paul. “But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant” (Rom. 5:20 nlt).
God is not waiting for us to blow it so He can pounce on us. He is in the business of grace, forgiveness, and restoration. We need only recognize that our sin is neither cute nor excusable and come to Him in faith and repentance.
Father, be merciful to me, a sinner.
There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Romans 8:1
My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
“Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”
None of us lives to himself… —Romans 14:7
Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We “sit together in the heavenly places…” (Ephesians 2:6). “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it…” (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer. But you ask, “Who is sufficient to be able to live up to such a lofty standard?” “Our sufficiency is from God…” and God alone (2 Corinthians 3:5).
“You shall be witnesses to Me…” (Acts 1:8). How many of us are willing to spend every bit of our nervous, mental, moral, and spiritual energy for Jesus Christ? That is what God means when He uses the word witness. But it takes time, so be patient with yourself. Why has God left us on the earth? Is it simply to be saved and sanctified? No, it is to be at work in service to Him. Am I willing to be broken bread and poured-out wine for Him? Am I willing to be of no value to this age or this life except for one purpose and one alone— to be used to disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ. My life of service to God is the way I say “thank you” to Him for His inexpressibly wonderful salvation. Remember, it is quite possible for God to set any of us aside if we refuse to be of service to Him— “…lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27).
WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS
The great thing about faith in God is that it keeps a man undisturbed in the midst of disturbance. Notes on Isaiah, 1376 R
A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Beyond the Walls - #7853
Once upon a time there was a machinist who lived with his wife, his four-year-old son, and his new baby boy in this cheap apartment on the south side of Chicago. He spent a chunk of his meager earnings on alcohol and cigarettes and gambling, and then the bottom dropped out of his life. His baby boy died suddenly at the age of only six months. He was crushed. I mean, his grief was inconsolable. This machinist (John was his name) took his one surviving boy to church. John didn't go in-no. He didn't go to church. But he did wait out in front in his car, smoking his cigarette and reading his Sunday paper. Until the day that one of the men of the church looked outside and noticed the man in the car. He didn't wait for John to come in. He went outside to John's car, introduced himself, asked a few questions, and then invited him in. Well, when John said he wasn't dressed for it, the man told him it didn't matter how he was dressed.
The little boy gave his heart to Jesus in that church. And only a few months later, his Dad started coming to the men's Bible class. And one Christmas Eve John tearfully walked the aisle, accepting Christ's forgiveness for his sins. He would grow in Christ and ultimately he'd become a deacon, then the chairman of the deacons, and then an active Christian lay leader. The little boy was me. The machinist in the car in front of the church was my Dad.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Beyond the Walls."
We were the un-churched. We were the lost. But someone went outside the walls of the church to reach my father. Because he did, my father is in heaven today. There are more people than ever like my father; they will never know Christ if we wait for them to come inside the walls of the church. We'll have to go out where they are if they're ever going to have a chance at heaven.
This is not a new idea. In John 4:4, our word for today from the Word of God, the Bible says, "Jesus had to go through Samaria." It was there that Jesus encountered the woman at the well and led her out of a life of promiscuity and emptiness into a new life in Christ. And ultimately she went back and told her village about Jesus and they all came to Him. John 4 tells us that "many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the woman's testimony."
Now why did Jesus have to go through Samaria when Jews did everything they could to avoid going through Samaria? Because Samaria is where you go if you want to reach Samaritans! If you want to follow our Master, we'll need to go where the lost people are. Most of them don't ever plan to go to our religious meeting to listen to our religious speaker talk on a religious subject in a religious place; which is usually how we go about trying to reach them isn't it? It's no wonder they're still lost.
If we want the lost to be at our outreaches, we need to have some of those outreaches in places they will come to-neutral places. And you've been strategically placed right in the middle of some spiritually dying people. You work with them, you live near them, you're in some group with them, you go to school with them, and you recreate with them. You are God's program for rescuing the lost people who are around you. That's why God placed you there, to save some lives. See, you already are where the spiritually dying people are! You don't have to go where they are. You're there!
It's very possible the reason my Dad is in heaven today is because someone left where it was comfortable and someone went outside the walls to reach him. That's where an awful lot of lost people are, and that's where they'll have to be reached; including people you know very well.
By the way, as you're listening to this, you might be my Dad, because you've never experienced the love and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ for yourself. And your heart's ready for that. You want that. This is what you've been looking for all your life. Maybe that's why this broadcast today; this is how He has come looking for you where you are.
Don't you want to be where He is forever? Would you tell Him today, "Jesus, I'm yours"? And I'd love to show you the way that my Dad and I both found Jesus. It's right there on our website and it will tell you how you can know Him for real. ANewStory.com-that's the website.
Jesus goes where lost people are, and we have to do that. Going outside the walls may be the only hope for a lot of people in your town-for someone you know and for someone you love.
